Dead Sea // [Colgate Standalone]

"This is the worst part," the District escort tells me.

For as long as I've been in the Capitol - hours, days, weeks? - I don't remember her name. She followed me to the training center in my own Games, hovered over me like I was her responsibility, but I don't remember what I'm supposed to call her.

Tera? Thalia? Something with a T. Something foreign, something that only sounds right when it's clipped with a Capitol accent. I don't know. I stare ahead at the screens with a blank expression, ignoring the way she looks at me with eyes painted up like rainbows, pretending like she cares.

(And she doesn't care, because she's taken a host of children to the slaughter. She knows better than to care, but I don't, and I'm a fucking idiot.)

"It's not like any of this was pleasant to begin with," I say, placing my head in my hands, rubbing at my temples as I lean forward on the couch. She's standing above me, watching me, pitying me.

Nocturne Vargas and May Rhodes are both dead now.

I shouldn't feel like their lives were my responsibility, but I do. I feel their deaths like a knife twisting around in my gut, and I wonder if I could have done something differently in order to save them. What if I had spent my time finding more sponsors for my own tributes instead of worrying about Siren? Would they be alive right now?

It feels like my kill count is rising. It shouldn't, but it does.

The Gamemakers were tight-lipped about my performance in the private training session that earned me a 12, so the entire Capitol thinks I killed five people, 'cept I know the number is six. I know because the avoxes won't clean up my living quarters unless I've completely left the building. I know because there's a girl who cleans up the table every time we take our meals on the ninth floor, and her hands shake when I look at her.

Six is the real number.

My thoughts are drifting away from the present, and I'm thankful for the distraction when my escort shakes her head and speaks up. "Well.. you'll just have to get used to it," she tells me. "It may not be pleasant, but you are alive."

That's right. I'm alive - so alive, in fact, that I have the privilege of watching other people die all around me.

Knuckles clenched, I lean back against the couch and stare at the wall, refusing to look her in the eyes just in case I snap.

"I know."

(Believe me, I know. I know that I'm alive and I'm breathing and my family is back home without a hunger in their bellies anymore because I helped them, and I know that I've got a whole long life ahead of me and so many things to experience and so many things to say and think and do, and the world is more beautiful than death and there's happiness out there somewhere, with people who love each other and people who are probably laughing right now, but that's living, not this, not this, not ever.)

There's a blanket hanging over the side of the couch, so I pull it onto my lap, biting absentmindedly at one of my nails.

"Can you leave me be, please?"

I don't look at her when I say it, just kinda stare down around my shoes, eyeing the pattern of the carpet like there's some sort of secret hidden beneath it.

Time passes, but I don't know how much, and somehow I end up on the floor, sprawled out with the blanket and my face pressed sideways up against the carpet while the screen moves out of the corner of my eye.

When they call me for dinner, I don't leave my spot on the ground.

(And breakfast, and lunch, and then dinner again, but the pattern's all the same. I nibble on a few pieces of bread when they're brought to me and get up to walk around when my body goes numb, but the floor is my safe spot and I've got no plans to leave it.)

When my heart beats, it beats slowly.

My attention only drifts back to the Games when Siren Baitwell graces the Capitol's screens, alive and fighting. Every time I see her face, she reminds me of what it's like to battle for something, what it's like to survive, and my heart seizes in my chest every time a blade so much as tears a gash in her armor.

I told her I would try to help her, but even I can't protect her from what's in that Arena.

When she kills, I do not feel bad for the fallen. I feel a sense of relief flood my chest every time I realize that she isn't dead, not yet, not ever, because Siren Baitwell is hope and life and a symbol of everything worth living for. I tell myself that if she survives, so can I. If the girl from Four can make it out of the Arena, I can survive this. I can go home and meet her again when the time comes, and I can hold her hand and tell her that everything's going to be okay, and I will not be alone in my suffering. I will have someone to lean on, someone to confide in, someone to care about.

Someone to love.

...

The day before the finale, I decide to write her a letter.

It's the first time in three days that I've felt any desire to crawl away from the screens and do something.

What if she dies?

That's what I'm thinking about when I write. What if she dies thinking that I didn't care?

I feel stupid with every word. I want to cross the whole thing out and throw it in the trash and abandon the idea completely, but I don't. I keep writing and writing until there's nothing left to say except chin up.

(And I don't follow my own advice anymore, because when I walk to the sponsorship office to deliver the letter along with my gift, I'm staring down at my toes, ignoring the flood of Capitolites that swarm me for a picture or an autograph.)

...

On the day of the finale, my pulse is pounding through my ears.

I see her smile when she reads my letter, see her blow bubbles into the air, see a flicker of hope light up in her eyes.

And then, within hours, that hope is gone.

...

When she leaves, I can feel myself breaking all over again, and I feel the weight of my thoughts imploding inward as I curl up into a ball on the carpet.

Not because I loved her.

(I didn't know her enough to love her.)

Not because she was beautiful.

(But she was.)

I break because Siren Baitwell made me feel the tiniest bit alive.

But now..

Now..

When my heart beats, it is weak.